Moped fans in here!

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Diddums

Diddums

Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
25,890
Location
Godalming
I'll always hold a soft spot for mopeds / scooters. I grew up in Holland where you were allowed a 50cc at 16, and at 18 a larger bike. As such, I spent two of the best years of my life hooning around on various scooters.

I'm not going to say I was a model citizen, almost every copper in our town recognized me by face and I was part of a group which were well known. Not troublemakers, just teens who spent way too much time working on their bikes and scraping every little bit of power out of them.

My first job was also delivering pizzas on a Peugeot Fox so suffice to say I learned lots of tricks on it, and was busted more than once riding it on the back wheel (only on the way back though, dem tips!).

I could go into the deeper stories of the countless brushes I had with the law (only ever fines and a few cubed bikes, never anything harmful) but I'll just drop this video here for now.


That started off as a 50cc showroom bike restricted to 30mph, and by the time we were done with it, it dyno'd at over 20bhp and 110mph. These guys bought it from us, and continued working on it. It's since been cubed sadly, but it was a beast of a bike, and would devastate most bigger machines up to about 50mph, at which point everything just sailed past us :p

Still, great fun.


I'd love to have another one again, but I'm married now and my wife can't stand the danger of bikes (especially here in London) so I can't put her through that. Maybe one day when I live in the countryside again.

Any other moped / scooter fans?
 
Nope, not at all.

When i was turning 16 i asked for my first bike. I was given a scooter.. It was horrible, but faster than most at school. Easy to use but not fun in the slightest and slow to accelerate.
2 weeks later i sold it and bought a TS50X, stuck and 70cc bore kit on and a Big One exhaust.

Scooters are ****. Get a real bike.
 
The only way a geared bike stood a chance against our scooters was if we got to top end, a mate of mine on an RS50 also with 70cc kits and all the toys couldn't keep up with us either.

That said, there was very little standard on these things, we also had the 70cc kits (single piston ring, nicasil lining), 28mm carbs, racing cranks with more aggressive inlets, kevlar reed valves, racing exhausts, entire replacement transmissions, the lot.

It was a different culture though, a geared bike would cost about quadruple the insurance so we had no choice.


I'd still love an RS125 though.
 
I take it those substantial mods were never declared on insurance either :p still cant help but think all that effort would have been better put into modding something like an RS125, but again as you said insurance for young riders...

The only scooter I would ride is a big bore Italjet :D
 
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Gah, damn you. The Italjet Dragster was one of my dram bikes for years, that and the Aprilia Area 51. The Italjet had the Minarelli engine so was infinitely tuneable. The Aprilia had the same but lengthened a bit, so parts were a bit pricier.

italjet-dragster-02.jpg


Then again, almost everything had a Minarelli engine back then, except for the Piaggio / Gilera range.

I also just remembered I learned to ride on a TS50. Belonged to a mate of mine, someone nicked it :(

Crushed him that did.
 
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I quite like scooters - had a Piaggio Typhoon 125 for a couple of years that I used for work. To be honest it was faster through traffic than my GS is, and more practical! I'd consider another, but want someone to bring a cool looking fast electric scooter with a 50 mile range for sub £6K....I'd buy that like a shot
 
I feel dirty for saying this, but i really like sitting on the big blue 400 Peugeot scooter at the NEC.

I did go home and gave the Rc8 a hug and told it not to worry.
 
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